Long Spring Days
絕句（遲日江山麗）
Juéjù · Chí rì jiāngshān lì
Long spring days, soft mud, flying swallows, and sleeping ducks in Du Fu’s quatrain, with Chinese, pinyin, a character gloss, original translation, and notes.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
About the text and pronunciation
The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 遲 chí lingering
- 日 rì day
- 江 jiāng rivers
- 山 shān hills
- 麗 lì beautiful
Word meanings — Line 2
- 春 chūn spring
- 風 fēng wind
- 花 huā flowers
- 草 cǎo grass
- 香 xiāng fragrant
Word meanings — Line 3
- 泥 ní mud
- 融 róng softens
- 飛 fēi fly
- 燕 yàn swallow
- 子 zǐ noun suffix
Word meanings — Line 4
- 沙 shā sand
- 暖 nuǎn warm
- 睡 shuì sleep
- 鴛 yuān mandarin
- 鴦 yāng ducks
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
遲日江山麗，
春風花草香。
泥融飛燕子，
沙暖睡鴛鴦。
Translation
Long spring days brighten rivers and hills;
the spring wind carries the scent of grass and flowers.
The mud grows soft, and swallows fly;
the sand is warm, and mandarin ducks sleep.
Try it from memory
After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
遲日江山麗，
Pronunciation hint
jiāng
Reveal meaning and translation
江 — rivers
Long spring days brighten rivers and hills;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
泥融飛燕子，
Pronunciation hint
fēi
Reveal meaning and translation
飛 — fly
The mud grows soft, and swallows fly;
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Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
沙暖睡鴛鴦。
Pronunciation hint
shuì
Reveal meaning and translation
睡 — sleep
the sand is warm, and mandarin ducks sleep.
One more question: what changes?
Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.
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Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2: spring light and scent
遲日 refers to the lingering or lengthening days of spring. The explicit 春風 in the second line helps fix the season. 江山 gives a broad landscape, then 花草香 puts something close enough to smell within it. The English makes the wind carry the fragrance, joining the phrases through a relation suggested by the Chinese.
Lines 3–4: the same warmth permits flight and rest
泥融 means that the mud has softened, a condition that can suggest swallows’ spring activity. The verse actually gives us swallows flying. 沙暖 gives another warm surface, where the 鴛鴦, mandarin ducks, sleep. Put the verbs 飛 and 睡 beside each other. One bird is in the air and another rests at ground level, and the poem holds both actions inside the same spring day.
Form and tone
This five-character jueju is the first of a pair titled Two Quatrains. 香 and 鴦 rhyme at the ends of lines two and four.
The last couplet has an especially clear arrangement: mud / sand, soft / warm, fly / sleep, swallows / mandarin ducks. The first two characters establish a condition and the final three give the birds and their action. Our English reverses the last two units for natural syntax. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin; no historical tone grid is supplied.
Historical context
Du Fu can hold a whole scene in four lines without naming the observer. The poem is often read as an image of spring ease. That is an interpretation of its warm surfaces and untroubled actions, rather than an emotion explicitly announced by a speaker.
In Two Yellow Orioles, the same poet also uses pairs to place birds within a larger view. Spring Dawn makes a useful contrast: Meng Haoran reconstructs the night and wonders about lost flowers. Here the flowers are fragrant in the present scene. The nature shelf keeps these different kinds of attention together.
The English translation and notes were written for PoemWell. The title's “long” is deliberate: the opening concerns spring's lengthening daylight, not necessarily late-afternoon sun.
Sources
《全唐詩》, juan 228, 絕句二首, first poem, checked against 絕句（遲日江山麗）. Long Spring Days is our English title from the opening phrase. Punctuation is editorial.
English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Updated .
Cite this reading
Du Fu. “Long Spring Days” (絕句（遲日江山麗）). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/late-sun-rivers-and-hills
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.